'Atlanta' cast talks Trump, race and fame

By Joe Cosacarelli, The New York Times

Published
10:14 pm EST, Sunday, March 4, 2018

From left: Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Glover, Zazie Beetz, Brian Tyree Henry and Donald Glover of "Atlanta," outside the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood, Calif., Feb. 19, 2018. The breakout FX comedy, created by Donald Glover, will return with a grittier new season. (Bryan Derballa/The New York Times) less

From left: Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Glover, Zazie Beetz, Brian Tyree Henry and Donald Glover of "Atlanta," outside the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood, Calif., Feb. 19, 2018. The breakout FX comedy, created by Donald Glover, will return with a grittier new season. (Bryan Derballa/The New York Times) less

The debut season of "Atlanta," the FX series created by polymath Donald Glover, will probably be remembered for its most ambitious, inexplicable gags: an athlete's invisible car; a mischievous child in whiteface; a black man playing Justin Bieber.

But the comedy, which was rapturously received by critics in 2016 and went on to win two Emmys and two Golden Globes, was also far from slapstick. It used its music-business trappings — a Princeton dropout tries to manage his drug-dealing cousin's budding rap career — to get at distinctly American ideas about ambition and identity. At once trippy and pointedly mundane, "Atlanta" played in the space where the indignities of being black and poor meet the indignities of striving to get rich.

Nearly a year and a half later, "Atlanta" returns to a different world. Donald Trump is president. The rap trio Migos, mascots for Season 1, are pop stars. And the show's cast members are no longer underdogs, breaking out with forthcoming roles like "Solo: A Star Wars Story," "The Lion King," "Deadpool 2," Sundance favorite "Sorry to Bother You" and the Kenneth Lonergan play "Lobby Hero."

Led by Glover, who stars in "Atlanta" as the rookie manager Earn, the new episodes maintain the show's knack for naturalistic storytelling. And they flesh out an ensemble that includes the rapper Alfred (or Paper Boi, played by Brian Tyree Henry), the blunted sidekick-philosopher Darius (Lakeith Stanfield) and the straightwoman Van (Zazie Beetz). Retitled "Atlanta Robbin' Season" — alluding to the time of year before the holidays when "everybody gotta eat" ("or be eaten") — the show builds on an idiosyncratic foundation without becoming too predictable in its unpredictability.

Leaning into its lived-in sense of place — most members of the all-black writer's room are Atlanta natives — the new season moves easily between Tarantino-esque (a scene-stealing Katt Williams and his domesticated alligator) and straightforward satire (a debasing visit to a Spotify-like tech company).

Before the show's late-February premiere, the cast, along with Glover's brother, Stephen, a lead writer on "Atlanta," convened to discuss the show. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: When did you start conceptualizing what Season 2 could be?

Stephen Glover: Not too long after the first season started airing, we had ideas that we wanted to do. But some of them were older ideas that we decided not to use once we nailed down a concept for Season 2.

Donald Glover: The show always feels like it's changing a lot while it's happening. Hiro always talks about how we want the show to be punk, so it has to be reactive. Punk doesn't age well because it is reactive — it's all emotion. A lot of things got thrown out because they felt almost too adult, too linear. We knew people were going to expect us to talk about Trump.

Q: Did you sit down and have that talk? The finale was early November 2016, right before the election.

Donald Glover: I think it started with us asking: "Do poor people even care? Are poor people even being affected by this?" It's not like oh, things were great for poor people under Obama, and now they're way bad. If you're poor, you're still at the bottom.

Stephen Glover: There's something funny about the idea that when you're poor it doesn't matter who's president. We talked about the possibility of doing a bit where you show the night Obama won and they're super happy, and then you show later and everything's exactly the same. Nothing ever changes.

Q: How did "Robbin' Season" become the overarching motif?

Stephen Glover: The concept of "Robbin' Season" just felt cool because we'd done a lot of summer stuff in the first season — it felt really hot. I started to remember what it's like to live there during the wintertime; the city just has a vibe that's very dark. People think it's a party city, but there's this side where there's a lot of crime and grittiness. I think that goes with the Trump vibe, too. People were just feeling a little less optimistic at the time. "Robbin' Season" encapsulated all of that.

Donald Glover: We wanted to show character development in people having their backs against the wall. We talked a lot about how people — specifically white people — would be like: "Man, I want to hang with Paper Boi. He seems like a cool guy!" In real life, you wouldn't hang with Paper Boi!

Brian Tyree Henry: They think he's accessible. But you should probably not get that comfortable.

Q: When we pick up, Paper Boi's career has progressed, but all the growth happens off-screen, and we just see melancholy parts of his rise: the lack of dependable income, bad fan encounters. As people who have been around the music business, is it important for you to puncture the fantasy of the quick come-up?

Q: Since 2016, Atlanta rap has risen again in popular culture. The Migos cameo would play differently than it did back then. Do you think the show will be received differently now because people feel they know that world more?

Lakeith Stanfield: I don't care about expectations. Atlanta is constantly moving and changing. If expectations are a balloon, "Atlanta" is a knife.

Zazie Beetz: Deep. (Laughter)

Q: You've had a run of great cameos — Migos, Jaleel White, Katt Williams in the new season. How many people did you have to turn down this time around?

Stephen Glover: (Laughs) There were a lot of people who wanted to be in this season, of course. I remember Chris Rock told me, once people like him start asking to be on the show, don't let anybody do it.